I’m going to skip into another class that has challenged me conceptually (which is Alex Diaz’s Color Photography – simple premise for the class, but he teaches much more than the straight subject). For each project, he has pushed us to create a more conceptually based set of images. The challenge for me is to, first, have a concept or idea that I am willing to work on. Something that I’m really interested in. The next and biggest challenge for me is to showcase that idea and concept differently, yet simultaneously through a set of four, five, or six images, all working together at different angles, pointing towards the same idea.
I certainly haven’t achieved that skill to perfection, but having worked on these projects have given me great experience and doing so. And achieving such results has made the process of making the photos much more enjoyable and rewarding.
I’ll be showing some series of photos in future posts (maybe), but for this one, I will be focusing on one particular project that I found very rewarding. The assignment was simply to use an alternative camera – something other than a traditional 35mm camera, or digital camera. We could use a Holga, pinhole, 4×5, cell phone camera, flatbed scanner – anything. My choice was to use the aesthetics of shooting through the top-down viewfinder of a twin-lens reflex camera. The look is a very shallow depth of field from the wide open viewfinder lens, imperfections of the ground glass, and muted colors from shooting through said glass. Behold:
(Make sure to look at all the small details of the image by clicking on the image, taking you to Flickr, then clicking “All Sizes” above the photo and look at the “original size” to blow it up to it’s full size.)
I’ve titled this photo Veggie Burger to give it humorous connotation based on what is actually shown – a “burger” with stacked, rich veggetables: broccoli, bell peppers, and carrots; things you would not normally put on a cheeseburger. I also blew the burger itself out of proportion, making it with about 3/4 of a pound of beef. Behind the burger itself is a very out-of-focus figure who has this unconventional food in front of them.
The concept I tried to portray in this image is a little loose, but I believe it gets it’s point across. Food is symbolic of one’s culture, and with America’s diet in a turning point from high fats and cholesterol towards a more popular health conscious diet through nutrition sciences, this literal Veggie Burger loosely shows that. The meat of the burger and cheese is on the bottom, partially hidden and overpowered by the rich vegetables. More than half of the dish, and the main focus of the images, points towards the veggies, bringing them dominantly into the viewer’s conscience.
I also wanted to use an approach similar to the old Dutch painting masters of still-lifes. To me, they were visually beautiful with tremendous detail, but on the surface, had no substance. It’s not until you dissect every detail and know what each individual flower, seed, nut and basket represents to the people of that time mean, that you truly get an understanding of the painting. On the surface, this image is not symbolically obvious, but upon pondering it has a deeper meaning, while the interesting visuals of shooting through the viewfinder make it unique compared to the rest of my works.